I titled this feature “Home Concerts” versus “House Concerts” for a very simple reason: anyone can toss a couple folding chairs in their living room, invite a musician over to play a couple songs and call it a “house concert” but it takes someone very special to create an environment that is something different, something inviting, and warm and wonderful for musicians to come and share their music. Binki and Jerry De Collibus are those types of people. The types who open their homes and their arms to songwriters and give them a place that feels…well, like home to them.
I recently spoke with Binki about the series and how it has evolved and grown over the years from a one off show, to a whole series over Summer and Autumn. She is an extremely smart, caring, and amazing person who is doing something incredibly special for our local music community. She and her husband, Jerry, are far beyond generous with the love they have for local musicians. I am seriously in awe of how beautiful these two souls are. This is part one, an introduction, in what will be a three part feature as we get deeper into the convo on how this all came to be. So for now, give a read and check out their fantastic house concerts this summer. Check it….
RLR: So talk about your house concerts, how it all got started and evolved?
Binki: Well we started doing some house concerts maybe six years ago. A couple in the house and then we saw Danielle Miraglia at TCAN and we asked her if she would do a house concert, she said yes. But when we thought about her we thought she might put a hole through a wall in the house (hinting on this gal’s power behind her music) so we thought well, we could clean out the barn. So we asked her if she would play inside a barn and she said ‘yes’. We put a carpet in, and Jerry said well I will build a stage and I said I would build a back drop, and then it was “I’ll put lights in”. Then we had Danielle and it was great. I think we probably had about 60 people, just word of mouth.
RLR: And I guess it had just grown from that first show, yeah?
Binki: So we had her the next year and then we had her the next year and then she had Tom and Larry Scudder. Then Tom said “this is really nice that you are doing this, you know, once a summer with Danielle but you guys really have no idea whats going on in Cambridge, Somerville. You are just out here doing happy house concerts, barn concerts.” So he said you really need to get “in”. The next day we happened to have tickets to see Ward (Hayden), Amy Black, and Sarah do a songwriter in the round at Passim. After that I was on school vacation and we started going EVERY SINGLE NIGHT, someplace. Wednesdays was Exile on Elm (at the Burren), Thursdays it was another place, every night. It was really Tom that sparked that. Kind of lighting the fire and putting in a little shame too…haha. Which was nice. He could have been happy to just have Danielle being our only concert every summer. Then we started going to Americana Mondays, so that year we asked Greg (Klyma) and Ryan Fitzsimmons if they would do a Fall concert. We thought it would be in the house, but it was mild and we did food in the house and the show in the barn for about 80 people. Rented a heater and it was nice and toasty, it was perfect. Had a fire going outside.
RLR: So it seems like a Summer/Fall kind of a schedule?
Binki: We haven’t planned on any winter stuff because we either have parking for 150 or 3, if the weather is bad. So it’s either one or the other and we weren’t keen on that.
(we then talked about who has played year over year, renting tents, and logistics)
RLR: How’d you came up with the name “Front Street House Concerts”?
Binki: So then people started asking “do you have business cards? Well, what’s the name of your concerts?” and then I finally said to Jerry if we are going to have this many concerts we have to think of a name. I was going to call it something else but everybody said it was stupid, so we called it Front Street Concerts and that was the same week a pub on our Main Street had an inspector come in when folks were in there singing. They didn’t have a music license and he closed them down and I thought “oh my God, this is what we are going to be dealing with…we committed to this, our name is there now and we have postcards”. Then we made a website, Amy Kucharik did that for us, and we decided to form a mission statement. Our commitment is really to the performers first and we do state that when I welcome everybody before a show. We are there to respect the performers and give them a respectable show. If we choose well then the audience will be happy. We do want to make it a very good experience with performers.
RLR: AMEN!
More on Binki and Jerry’s concert series coming soon (the two of us talked…A LOT…and all of it was wonderful and exciting)…
The next show will take place on June 27th and features good friends of Red Line Roots, Danielle Miraglia and Tom Bianchi! You can hit the link below to reserve your space and the dinner menu looks fantastic, summertime favorites!